


The Woman Clothed With The Sun

by WomanClothedInSun



Category: Fallout (Video Games), Fallout: New Vegas
Genre: Addiction, Alcohol, Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Angst, Angst and Humor, Apocalypse, Canon-Typical Violence, Canonical Character Death, Desert, Drug Addiction, Dubious Morality, Evil, F/M, Ghouls, Good and Evil, Gun Violence, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Implied/Referenced Rape/Non-con, Masochism, Mental Breakdown, Mental Health Issues, Mental Instability, Moral Dilemmas, Morally Ambiguous Character, Post-Apocalypse, Sadism, Sexual Violence, Slavery, Smut, Torture, Triggers, Unrequited Love, Unresolved Sexual Tension, Violence, mojave
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2017-01-06
Updated: 2017-04-13
Packaged: 2018-09-15 06:31:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 2
Words: 2,806
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/9223232
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/WomanClothedInSun/pseuds/WomanClothedInSun
Summary: Courier Six has a paralyzer smile, a bulletproof heart, and a fistful of bad habits.There's just so much of her to break.





	1. The Number Of The Beast

**Author's Note:**

> This is my very first fic, honoring one of my all-time favourite video games. Any constructive feedback is helpful! Don't be afraid to leave me a kudos or a comment if I'm doing a good job, or if there's something you'd like to see changed/tweaked.
> 
> Thanks for reading!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Six is given a very important task. Maybe the Devil is real after all.

Courier Six stands just under feet tall and has six fingers on her left hand. She sleeps six hours a night if she can sleep at all. She has six scars and six regrets, but only one tattoo. 

"666" is embedded in her forearm, patchy and faded and ugly, gothic script blotting out two of her six scars. 

She was fourteen when she got it - six years of sunlight and wind and sand and life have warped it, but it is unmistakeable. 

The number of the beast. 

SixSixSix. 

\--

Her aviators slide down her button nose and her brows furrow as she travels alone down the road. The Mojave sun is merciless and her blazing hazel eyes are no match for high noon. Her lips are plump and cracked and her tongue darts out to wet them. 

The sounds of Radio New Vegas float out of her PipBoy and hang in the air, and she can almost see the music mixing with the haze reflecting off the asphalt. She can feel her feet swelling in her combat boots, and she veers off the pavement to take a well-deserved break. 

She sinks into the shade with a groan and leans forward to untie her boots. She attempts to whistle along to the radio, but her throat is ravaged by the wind and the only thing that comes out is hot air. "Fuck." Her voice is as raspy and scratched as a ghoul's and she is seized with a coughing fit. 

She thinks back to the day she left Freeside. 

She skipped town about 5 or 6 years back at 16 and not a moment too soon. She spent the two years before dancing at the Wrangler and dancing for her boyfriend in the dead of night, after he'd sit at the bar and drink with the boys until he could walk her back to his place from work. He was one of the Kings and she was his Queen, but that was another lifetime ago. She didn't go by Six then, and she only had two of her scars - a cigar burn on the back of her right hand and a smear on her hip from an errant bullet. The bullet didn't get her right in the meat, but it came close enough to teach her a good lesson about pissing off the Khans. 

God, how she used to laugh with her man, Johnny. A smile tugs at her lips at the memory of him but she stamps the impulse down quick. She thinks back to the day she left Freeside and she realizes that she doesn’t regret it.

Freeside was another name ago. Six doesn't know that girl anymore. Six left Johnny alone in the dark and she left that girl in the city she thought she would live and die in. 

But for all the ghosts that walked Freeside, at least there was water and shelter and chems. The Mojave usually doesn't offer such luxuries. 

She shakes her head and ties her thick black hair up off the sweat-sticky nape of her neck, and pulls her boots back on. She undoes two buttons on her button-up and hikes her pants up, reluctant to get back to work, but she won't accept payment for sitting on her ass doing jack shit. Besides, she has a personal errand to run. Some slick-talking fuck in an ugly checker jacket tried to put her in the ground two months ago, and he had her package. 

She has to remember to change her bandages at the next test stop. She forgot once, after stepping into a bear trap, and the infection hit her hard and fast. She nearly lost her foot. She gained some valuable information - the Mojave doesn’t care if you live or die. The Mojave doesn’t give a shit about your moral compass, or who you’re running from, or who’s waiting up for you at home. It is immense and dry and relentless and you will tire out far, far faster than the desert ever would.

She manages to get to a rest stop a few miles down the road. She’s grateful for the reprieve and sits in the abandoned, wide open garage of a truck stop, unwinding the dirty, dried-blood-brown bandages from her forearm. A coyote jumped at her in the middle of a fight and sank its teeth in, but that was three weeks ago, and there wasn’t much of a wound left. She grimaces as she splashes vodka on it to sterilize it - the pain burns her, but she’s never been a stranger to fire.

She pops a couple Mentats from their tarnished little tin and washes them down with a nip of whiskey. It made her want to vomit when she first started drinking it, but after a few months, she could barely taste it. She could barely feel a thing.

She lights up a cigarette and puts a marker over Nipton in her PipBoy. It’ll be nearly sundown when she hits the city and she needs a warm bed and a warm body to soothe the ache in her bones. 

She sets out on the road, making a mental note to avoid a column of smoke rising from the horizon.

\--

It’s a quarter to seven when she realizes that the column of smoke has a name. Nipton’s been reduced to a smudge in the dust and it fucking stinks. She pulls her neckerchief to her nose and pushes her aviators to rest on her head, gagging on the cloying stench of rotten meat with a hint of cheap perfume. 

Her hand flies to her pistol as a man comes scrambling out of the town’s gates, a shrimpy, rat-faced man with wire framed glasses and a tacky bowl cut. “Smell that air!” He laughs maniacally, stopping a few meters short of Six. “Couldn’t ya just drink it like booze?” He waves a slip of paper in the air smugly, and Six decides that this man, while nuttier than squirrel shit, isn’t a threat.  
“Are you okay?” She says, taking a step forward.  
“Are you fuckin’ serious? Never better! I won the lottery!”  
“The...what? What lottery?” She keeps her hand on her 9mm pistol as he moves towards her.  
“You fuckin’ dense er somethin’? The only lottery that matters! EAT IT, NIPTON!” He rushes past her, in such a hurry that he stumbles and eats shit not thirty yards away. She keeps her eyes on him until he’s a speck in the distance, and looks towards the city.

“...mercy…” She whispers and does the sign of the cross, a habit she picked up from her Mother. Her footsteps are slow and unsteady, and nothing, nothing in this world could prepare her for the sight before her.

“Oh…” She gags and leans against a sign post. “Oh, oh, oh no, nooo…” She croaks.

At the end of the street, there is a smoking pile of tires, corpses scattered on top and around it. The street is lined with people - strung up, crucified, and dying.

She rushes to turn off her PipBoy and hears the unlucky living groaning, begging, praying for mercy to a God they never met. 

She recognizes a few from her last stay in Nipton - but one in particular stands out. A girl, about 14, with blood running down her thighs, is sobbing so loudly Six can barely hear herself think.

Heads mounted on pikes watch like voyeurs and her skin is crawling.

She can't imagine being that young and going through this kind of hell. A hell, yes, but not _this_ hell. And the child still screams. She cries for her mother, but her mother is probably dead, and her voice is laden with ear splitting agony. A bullet is a more effective silencer than soothing words, and Six bites her lip so hard she breaks the skin as she aims her gun between the girl’s eyes, contemplating the meaning of mercy. Who is she to take a life? Is there much life left to take? “I’m doing you a favour.” She mutters and wipes away dust and tears from her face. 

She’s locked in a staredown, Six and this girl, and Six is disturbed - it feels like she’s looking into a mirror. "Please stop crying." But the girl wails on, and there's nothing Six can do.

It scares her, and before she can doubt her actions, she squeezes the trigger and now blood is spattered on her face and she staggers back.

“A mercy kill?” A slimy hiss of a voice rings out, echoing down the main drag, and Six nearly shits herself right there. She’s shaking in her boots, trembling so hard she can barely aim the gun, so she holsters it and backs away. He advances. “I didn’t think a profligate whore would have the stomach for bloodshed. Perhaps you don’t. You look ill.” A man almost as tall as she is moves toward her steady and slow, wearing some old-timey war uniform, a wolf’s head crown, and shades so thick she can’t see his eyes. She sobs. He smiles, and she gags.  
“Please, please don’t--”  
“Don’t worry. I won’t have you lashed to a cross like your fellow degenerates.” He purrs. “It’s useful you happened to pass by.” He grins now with his fangs - no, his teeth bared. “Bear witness to the fate of Nipton. Memorize every detail.” He’s so close now he could brush her collarbone with his fingertips if he wanted to. She couldn’t stop him if she tried. “And then? When you move on? I want you to teach everyone the lesson Caesar’s Legion taught here.” He butchers the pronunciation of the name, KAI-zar, but she doesn’t dare correct him. “Especially to any NCR troops you come across.”  
“I d-don’t--”  
“Hush.” His voice is stern and her protests die in her throat. “...well?” He snaps, and she cringes.  
“I don’t...I don’t understand, what lesson?” She breaths in gasps, short and pitchy.  
“Perhaps that they are weak and we are strong?” His voice is like a serpent’s and she wishes she could see his eyes. “This much was known already. But the depths of their moral sickness? Their...dissolution?” The grin slides off his face. “Nipton served as the perfect object lesson. A wicked place, debase and corrupt, serving all as long as they paid. A town of whores. Perhaps not unlike yourself.” He chuckles and the men lining the street behind him followed suit. She is paralyzed and hopelessly outmatched. “For a pittance, the town agreed to trap those it had sheltered. Only when I sprang it did they realize they were tangled, too.”  
“Everyone?”  
“Every living soul.” His voice is perverse, and she feels like she would have to bathe for days to get the sound of him off of her.  
“Innocent people?”  
“Innocent in comparison to whom?” He narrows his eyes and steps forward, yanking her neckerchief down. His hand wraps around her jaw almost tenderly as he tilts her head down to get a better look at her. “Hear my commands, woman, and obey.” He sneers, and drags a calloused thumb across her lips. He only releases her when she nods, and he pushes hard, sending her flying back into the ground. “Legionnaires! March!” He commands, and she stays there, shivering in the dirt until the sounds of the men and their snarling hounds sound like a fever dream.

The dead and dying stare at her accusingly, as if to wordlessly place blame. “I…” She gets up and swallows another sob. These strangers were weak. They sold out their own. That didn’t make their deaths right...but it wasn’t such a bitter pill to swallow. Nipton had a reputation, of course they would try to cut a deal. Everyone wants to get in bed with the Devil, and the Devil just touched her face so sweetly she could have died right there.

It bothers her that it makes so much sense to raze the place. It bothers her that she's not that bothered by the crying, not as much as she was before.

\--

She creeps into one of the ransacked homes, pistol drawn, and when she’s certain the house is clear, she drags an armchair in front of the door, puts on Radio New Vegas, and cracks open her medicine bag. Med-X soothes her stiff muscles and the rest of the whiskey finally, finally pulls her under for the night.

She dreams of a desert fox following her, nipping at her ankles, whispering to her with a serpent's tongue, telling her all the dirty secrets she can stand, and then some.

She should have stopped dreaming years ago.


	2. Acquainted With Grief

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Can you mourn the loss of what was never yours? How do we measure the value of the past?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Sorry for the lack of updates - life hit me hard and hit me fast. 
> 
> This is a filler chapter until I can flesh out Chapter 3.

Six wakes without opening her eyes, her throat drier than the dust outside and her lungs full of cobwebs. 

On most days, she takes comfort in Mr. New Vegas professing his love for her, but today, after what she had to deal with last night...

There is a time and a place for joy. 

She turns off the radio and makes her way to the washroom. Someone has decided to take mercy on her, because the water is running. It tastes like pennies and blood, and it smells like rust, but it quenches her thirst. 

She thinks back to the fresh rain in Arizona and looks at the glum woman in the mirror. "Good morning." She sighs and scrubs her face with cool water and the sleeve of her button up, before tying it around her waist, over her ragged camisole. The sun has risen and it's going to be beating down on her badly enough without the added layer. 

It always amazes Six what a good scrub with semi-fresh water can do to her face. She looks ten years younger with all the dirt washed away, minus the streaks of tears running through the Mojave dust on her face. She feels like she's removing a brand - she is no longer a slave to the wasteland, she is no longer barren and dying, she is fresh and shiny and young again, freed from the burden of the bomb. 

When she was a child, she would imagine what life was like before the Great War. People could talk to each other instantly from the east to the west. There were all kinds of animals, ones she had only seen in picture books, Brahmin that only had one head, geckos so small people kept them in glass cages.

She found catalogues that had dresses wholly untainted by fire and rubble, beautiful hairstyles that she had tried to recreate, cosmetics that could make something out of nothing, and oh, the buildings! She saw what was, and what could never be, and oh, how it burned her to see what she had been refused. 

Her reflection stares back at her, sullen and moody, and in that moment she hopes that whatever had started the Great War was worth it. 

Tears prick at her eyes, but she blinks them away and goes to the kitchen to boil some water and cook up some noodles. Tears wouldn't help her spread the Legion's word. No use crying over what she couldn't change. No use crying over anything. 

She lights up a cigarette and peers out the window. The smoke had died down a little bit in the night, but the rest of the profligates - the wretched debris that used to be Nipton's people - hang dead or nearly there on makeshift crosses. 

Vulpes Inculta crosses her mind again, and she shudders before taking a drag. She still feels his hand on her jawline, digging his fingers into the bone, the pad of his thumb scraping along her lip. She ghosts her fingers along the path he made, from the corner of her jaw to the centre of her mouth. 

She hated to admit it, but he had shaken her up and she felt dirty. His voice wrapped itself around her, seeping through her clothes and into her bones. 

He called her a whore. 

He slaughtered an entire town, but...he had called her a whore. 

She taps the ash of her cigarette into the sink and takes another drag, poking at the ramen with a fork. 

In other circumstances she may have found him handsome, but there is something unnerving about his angular structure. She has a feeling he isn't human, with his thin, hard line of a mouth, cheekbones that bordered on womanly, and a high-bred, wispy voice. 

She stubs her cigarette out and closes the curtains above the sink hard. Within the hour, she's closing the front door of her shelter, the radio is back on, and a cigarette dangles from her lips. She closes her eyes with the clink of the lighter, and opens them to the brilliant sun. 

The sooner she gets this bullshit errand done, the better.


End file.
